Survey Shows Americans Confused By How Google, Facebook Make Money

A new survey from Harris Interactive on behalf of The Search Agency finds, among other things, that large numbers of people in the US don’t really understand how Facebook and Google make money. The online survey was conducted in August 2012 with a sample of just over 2,000 adults. The Search Agency (via Harris) asked whether people agreed with the question “I understand how Facebook makes money.” A slight majority (54 percent) said that they strongly or somewhat agreed. On the flip side, 46 percent essentially did not understand. However even among the 54 percent who said they understood, 36 percent were more tentative, indicating that they only “somewhat” understood. More specific details were not explored in the survey. When it came to search engine revenues, people did better. Just over three-fourths (78 percent) understood that search engines made money through adverti...